Seedless synthesis of gold nanorods with (+)-catechin-assisted and red blood cell membranes coating as a biomimetic photothermal agents.

Gold nanorods (GNRs) have become an attractive candidate in photothermal ablation against cancer cells for their excellent photothermal transduction effect. However, the applications of GNRs in nanomedicine have been obstructed by the high cytotoxicity from the surfactant. Mass efforts have been attempted to develop the GNRs with high photothermal transduction efficiency and exploit modification materials to low the cytotoxicity of the GNRs. In this paper, (+)-catechin, a natural polyphenol extracted from green tea with anti-oxidization activity, was chosen as an effective reductant through seedless method to synthesize GNRs with a high quality, which also exhibited an excellent photothermal transduction efficiency (57.9%). Red blood cells (RBC) membranes were exploited as the biomimetic coating materials to encapsulate the GNRs to enhance the biocompatibility and photothermal stability, which could finally realize the highly photothermal ablation effect against the melanoma cells. Such cell membrane-based biomimetic nanomaterials might have a great potential in future photothermal therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]